REviews

“This extensive and stunningly reported true story of a tragic shipwreck off Montauk is tinged with that rebel late-hippie-era vibe of the late seventies and early eighties. It's about family secrets, romances cut short, the fishing life, and the evolving history of the East End of Long Island, now known as ‘The Hamptons.’ It’s an honest and touching book, and a hell of a story.” — Ron Suskind, bestselling author of Life, Animated

"The Lost Boys of Montauk is riveting. Combining gorgeous prose and exhaustive research, Fairbanks paints a fascinating portrait of a shipwreck and its aftermath. It's a complex tale of class divides in the Hamptons, of grief, passion, memory, and youth. Over the course of the book, we come to know and care deeply for the young men who were lost at sea and for those who live on to tell their story. A must-read." — J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Friends and Strangers

“Not since Peter Matthiessen’s Men’s Lives has there been such an insightful depiction of the struggles, joys, and dangers of being a fisherman out of Montauk. The Lost Boys of Montauk is beautifully written and impeccably researched. You’ll never again hear the words ‘lost at sea’ and not think of this book.” — Steven Gaines, bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow

“Four commercial fishermen perished in a late-winter storm off the coast of Long Island in 1984. Through obsessively detailed reporting, clear, powerful writing, and the unstoppable storytelling of a thriller, Amanda Fairbanks has made this one event stand for a whole world. The Lost Boys of Montauk is an unforgettable portrait of fishermen’s culture, of the peculiarities of a place inhabited by ordinary people and the very rich, and of the ways in which a tragedy can exert a force on people’s lives down through the decades.” — Nicholas Lemann, author of Transaction Man

“The Lost Boys of Montauk describes the permanent shadow cast across the lives of the women, men, and children affected by the sinking of the Wind Blown in a winter storm forty years ago, with all four young men aboard lost at sea. Amanda Fairbanks collects the histories of the men and their families and describes the atmosphere of a fishing town at the eastern end of Long Island. Her book is a kind of collective testimony, a chorus of voices that would not otherwise have been heard.” — Alec Wilkinson, author of The Riverkeeper

“This grippingly reported book is about social class and boundaries, about family, about the web of pain — grief, drugs, alcoholism, divorce, loneliness — that spins out of devastating loss. From generation to generation, from family to family, Fairbanks documents trauma’s insidious effect on an entire East End community.” — Susan Scarf Merrell, author of Shirley

"An arresting, awesome story — vivid and sensory, and as hypnotic as the tides of the sea. Fairbanks is an in-depth reporter who weaves wonderfully a vastly researched tale into a cinematic page-turner." — Mira Ptacin, author of The In-Betweens

"The Lost Boys of Montauk gives something of an idea of what Steinbeck and Melville might have produced had they written narrative nonfiction together. In telling the tragic tale of four men whose lives were cut short, Fairbanks crafts a gripping portrait not only of the characters, but of a time and place now trapped in the amber of the not-too-distant past." — Graydon Carter, Editor of Air Mail

"Amanda Fairbanks' story of the Wind Blown and the four men who died at sea, their lives, and the disaster's long effects is a brilliantly reported, heartrending epic that captures the beautiful, complicated—and in this case, tragic—threads in a community that I have long called home and that my family's newspaper has covered for generations. This book belongs in every South Fork collection." — David Rattray, Editor, The East Hampton Star

"A relentlessly reported page-turner about the collision of man and nature on the ocean and the collateral damage back on land." — Tom Clavin, bestselling author of Dodge City